“Cancel culture doesn’t exist,” they say, as the former President of the United States is promptly banned from Twitter. “It’s a private company! They can do whatever they want!” Fair enough. “Yelich drives one deep into right, back at the wall, it’s gone! And there goes Bernie Brewer down the slippery, slopey slide!” I understand that both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of trying to “cancel” people, and it just happens to be one side’s “time.” However, to say or pretend that cancel culture does not exist just because your “team” is the one guilty of it is disingenuous at best. Team is probably the most accurate word to use. That is what politics is now. Sports. Treating politics or social issues as if they are sports seems to force people into groupthink. Obviously, baseball fans love baseball. Underneath the baseball umbrella, you have Boston Red Sox fans and New York Yankees fans. A Red Sox fan may go into Yankee Stadium wearing a Red Sox jersey or vice versa, and that fan may get a beer thrown at him, middle-fingered, popcorn dumped on him, insulted, the list goes on. All just because that fan cheers for the other side, even though the sole reason fans of either team are there is because they love baseball. Kind of sounds like the landscape today, does it not? For what it’s worth, sporting events are at their best when fans are able to toe the line of the rivalry. If you are a Ducks fan walking into STAPLES Center for a game, you should expect to be vociferously (a word nobody uses in real life) boo’d throughout the game’s entirety, and that is fine so long as it stays there.
My method of combating cancel culture is to walk into Fenway Park wearing Yankees gear. “Fuck you, guys.” About a year and a half ago, I would have welcomed the beer throwing. Maybe some of it would have seeped into my pores. As a result of this, I’ve been suspended from Twitter on numerous occasions. Some might say rightfully so and type some keyboard warrior jargon like, “freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences!!!!” What they mean by that is that they are completely okay with throwing you out of Fenway for being a Yankees fan. They want to control or restrict who can or cannot come to watch the game. As stated before, I should expect to get mercifully boo’d the entire game for wearing a Yankees jersey. That is a natural consequence that is to be expected. But if I was to be thrown out of Fenway, that would be.. sportsism. Oh, fuck. Did I just give them a new term? Anyway, that would be a constructed consequence just because someone could not deal with it. Piss off.
Of course, if I were to launch a campaign on a social media platform that urged Yankee fans to murder Red Sox fans (You hear how ridiculous that sounds? These people *think* that is happening), then I should be shut down immediately. But that isn’t what people are being ostracized for. They try to manipulate you and me (and probably themselves) into thinking that is the case, but it hardly is. The type of canceling we are talking about is the type that removes Don Cherry from a job he worked at for thirty years (THIRTY YEARS! THIRTY YEARS! *Dusty Rhodes voice)* because he said he believes immigrants should buy poppies. Now, you tell me. Is that threatening Habs fans, or is that throwing him out of the Montreal Forum for wearing a Bruins jersey?
They have made people afraid to think and speak for themselves. That is why the only lauded takes you see on Twitter is some soft, lukewarm bullshit. “Going out on a limb here, but I think slavery was bad.” Send. Oh, good for you! What else? Is Monday your least favorite day? If you could have prevented 9/11, would you have? Do you think Mike Trout is good at baseball? Does it suck when you lose your car keys? Fuck me. I could only dream of being like you one day. Wear your own jersey. Obviously, we are going to have beliefs and opinions that others share. That doesn’t necessarily mean we play for that team. A Christian is a Christian himself. He has his own personal relationship with God. At Church, he may throw on the Christian jersey because that’s what Christians do.. at Church. Los Angeles Kings fans wear Kings merch at STAPLES Center. But we would look like idiots if we wore a Kings jersey to Walmart. EYE, personally, might like it, but that’s because I’m a Kings fan. To everyone else, they would look like an idiot. Rightfully so. So, we wear our own jerseys (or should wear our own jerseys) most of the time. You could think of it like sponsors on a soccer jersey. One way to tell we’ve begun the process of abandoning ideology and dawning our own jersey is by having unpopular beliefs, takes, or opinions. Cancellable, you could say. Release them, and never apologize for them. The people who have generated this cancel-climate are insatiable. Put on your own jersey and walk into The Cancel Coliseum without fear. With no further ado, here are my top 10 most unpopular or cancellable opinions, in no particular order:
“Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.” – Bertrand Russell.
1. Bill Cosby was innocent. Perhaps, framed. Google “Bill Cosby buy NBC,” and a PolitiFact result pops up, insisting that he was not framed. So, I have that going for me. That’s a huge plus for this cancellable take. Cosby is on record making comments that went against the “mainstream media” grain. He had stated that African Americans put too much emphasis on looking cool, sounding cool, sports, “bitches,” and acting tough instead of education, self-improvement, and self-respect. You’ll find garbage websites like Buzzfeed, Vox, and the Washington Post burying Cosby’s “Pound Cake” speech. Why? Because websites like these and the media are not in the business of the truth. If Cosby were to get a hold of NBC, then these truths would be broadcasted. They don’t want and won’t have that shit. So, what happens? Bang. A bunch of girls randomly come out and state that Cosby drugged them. Sixty years ago. What? You just came out of your drug-induced trance fifty years later? I will concede that “innocent” might be the wrong word, but he isn’t necessarily guilty either. If your drink is spiked with quaaludes without your knowledge, that’s one thing; If you consensually take quaaludes – well, you just consensually took fuckin’ quaaludes. Have you considered *NOT* taking quaaludes? Now, before you all write into WordPress to get this site canceled, here is the overlying theme: There is not much of a difference between what Cosby did and what Joe Smith attempts to do at the Royal Oak Lounge every weekend. “Can I buy you a drink?” “Sure!” she says. Women promote getting to drink for free all-over social media. However, every now and then, Joe Smith is on his game, and you did a little too much free drinking. Did you not know Joe Smith wanted to blow your back out or something?
2. LGBTQ are just the white rappers of today. Roughly 16% of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ. Keep that statistic in the back of your mind. I was eighteen years old and had no idea who the hell I was. Now, I’m thirty-two and only have a slight understanding. I’ve always fancied myself a writer, and in 2003 “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” came out. Bingo. “I can be a rapper, too!” said Josh. So, I gave it a go. That phase lasted longer than it should have. When I look back at it today, it’s pretty embarrassing. Eventually, I think I became serviceable in the sense that not everything was complete trash. You see that with a few trans people today. Some of them can fool you if only at first glance. It might take a triple or quadruple take to notice that you just lusted over a man’s big, nice, fake tits. Of course, upon this discovery, you vomit straight away, but the point is that you get better if you put in the work. That still doesn’t make me a rapper, and it doesn’t make you trans. According to the aforementioned statistic, all these 18-year-old kids are out there suckinalilcock. Except for you know damn well that they aren’t. They’re just riding the new wave being pushed upon them. I’d imagine that sixteen percent of white kids in 2003 identified as rappers. The thing is that most of them just dressed the part. Sideways hat, baggy jeans, altered their voice and rhetoric, the whole works. Don’t see a lot of 40-year-old white rappers, do you? Hey, at least I put out music. A lot of these college kids don’t even try. They just say they identify as something, and that’s that. Put a cock in it. Otherwise, stop feeding me lines about your “identification.”
3. At least 10% of Qanon is legit. There was a time when I thought about 99% of it was legit. During that time, I was in the worst frame of mind in my entire life. You could say I was mentally ill. I would send links to various videos and “Q drops” to my friends and family. In turn, I believe this made family members blame Qanon for the condition I was in, but it wasn’t Q’s fault. My troubles were of my own making. We’ll get to that. If nothing else, the concept of Q is fascinating. Even the hashtag #WWG1WGA is cool. The idea of the populous waking up, turning from dark to light, and taking on the forces of evil that operate behind closed doors is something to get behind. Therein lies the 10% of it being legit. There is not a doubt in my mind that there is a group of evil, sinister people treating the World and the people that live in it like it’s a game of “The Sims.” While I may have rightfully scaled it back from ninety-nine percent to ten percent, given the circumstances, that is still an unfortunate amount of legitimacy. Sure, I don’t believe these people kidnap kids and torture them in order to sky-rocket their levels of adrenaline, so they can drink their blood in order to stay younger. But the most prominent World leaders meeting together at the Bohemian Grove to formulate a plan of action to keep us in the dark? Yeah, I believe that. 100%.
4. Addiction is not a disease. I would never share this in the rooms. I’m not there to reinvent the wheel, but the reason I ended up an alcoholic is that I drank myself beyond the point of control. Period. My troubles were and are of my own making. Perhaps, I am not defining the word disease correctly, but addiction is not a disease in the way that we normally think of it. Imagine me sitting next to somebody with leukemia and thinking we are in any way similar. “Boy. You and I got the short end of the stick, huh?” No. We are not the same.
5. Rap Music is the Devil’s music, but I do like some of it. “This is that ignorant shit you like. N****, fuck, shit, ass, bitch, trick plus ice.” That particular song happens to be mocking the ignorance in rap, but you get the point. Anyway, I’m not talking about that underground rapper that you and two other people have heard of. He may or may not actually have something to say, but “Immortal Technique” isn’t exactly the face of rap music. By and large, rap music is about pride, narcissism, sex, drugs, murder, and a plethora of other things that Satan loves. The catch is that a lot of it is catchy. Well, Satan is not going to tell you that he hates God. In fact, he might even say the opposite and rhyme about it on a Just Blaze beat. However, I’m not going to listen to Beethoven before I go play basketball, and a lot of rock music gives me a headache. I make more shots when I’m feeling like “Federico Fellini in the flesh” or “Sergio Tacchini inside his mesh!” It is what it is.
6. Jesus existed; Groomed in the East. This is just a fun one for me. Obviously, we will never know, so it might be pointless to discuss, but I believe it to be entirely plausible that in the “lost years” of Jesus Christ (Between ages 12-30), He had traveled to the east. Nicolas Notovitch wrote “The Life of Saint Issa” in 1894, in which he claims to have obtained a Tibetan manuscript in Ladakh, documenting Jesus’ visit. Notovitch was promptly buried by many of his contemporaries because, of course, he was. Nobody wants to be beaten to that punch. Max Muller, Notovitch’s biggest critic, stated that Nicolas may have been a victim of the Ladakh monk’s practical jokes. Ah, yes. Because if there is one thing that we can gather by observing monk behavior, it’s that they have an obvious propensity for laughter. In any case, the relevancy of Jesus’ possible travels to the east is that He would have studied with Buddhists and Hindus. There is another book out there worth reading titled, “Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings.” If it were the case that Jesus traveled east, there would be more continuity between the religions of the east and west than we thought, which means quite possibly more unity. Again, unity that “they” don’t want.
7. Moises Alou could not have caught it. Had to throw this in here. I feel bad for Bartman. Alou didn’t have a chance in hell to catch that ball, and his reaction alone made Bartman’s life a living hell. Cubs fans wanted to point to him like it was his fault or something. Your team gave up eight fuckin’ runs in the inning. Eight. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. In a playoff game. You had walks, an error on an inning-ending double play, missing cut-off men, 0-2 meat pitches, but you all wanted to blame Bartman because he went for a ball that Alou could have never caught. Shut up.
8. “Casual sex is an adolescent fantasy.” Without lying, have you ever seen it really work? Not have you seen it work for you personally, but have you seen it work for both parties involved? I haven’t. Somebody always, no pun, gets fucked in the end. If the thought process of engaging in casual sex with someone for an elongated period of time is that you won’t be the one hurt in the end but that they will, you are completely off the mark on how to behave properly in the World. Depending on who you ask, I have dabbled myself. Be that as it may, it results in pain, not only for me but for somebody else concurrently. You could say an idea of success is behaving in a way that not only uplifts you but the people around you as well. Getting a nut off, or even simultaneously helping somebody else get a nut off, does not qualify.
9. MMA is glorified bar-fighting. “So and so trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, and Karate! MMA is great because of all the different styles!” Okay, but then the bell rings, and two men start to aggressively hump each other. What did I just tell them about casual sex? Yet here they are in front of the World, trying to make it work. Those “high-kicks” look ridiculous. You can find those exact kicks at any dive bar in America. Easy, affliction shirt guy. I know you could kick my ass. Well, not if I learned how to box. But I’m just joking, and it’s just an opinion. No need to want to rear-naked-butt-ra.. I mean, choke me.
10. It’s always our fault, guys. Never hers. “Don’t get mad at a fish that swims.” Fish swim. That’s what they do. The same thing is true with women in the context of a relationship. We know that, so anything that is wrong within the relationship is our responsibility to fix. If it is beyond repair, then we need to take responsibility for that, too. There is a principle behind all of that, which is something like, “do not get involved in a relationship until you are ready for one.” A principle that I have failed to adhere to in all my previous attempts. And look at what happened to those ventures. They went about as well as Cosby in charge of distributing quaaludes. We are supposed to be the captain of the ship. That isn’t something that should ever be said directly. Let them have their day in the sun. Nonetheless, if we agree that we are supposed to be the captain, then it is our responsibility if the ship sinks – because she will find another boat. Don’t you worry about that. After all, if there is anything she knows how to do, it’s swim.
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